Two novelties and three masterpieces from the recent past await us in this second orchestral concert by the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY. Palimpsest is the term used to describe old documents in which the original text has been erased and overwritten several times, without completely disappearing. Sir George Benjamin has taken up this principle in Palimpsests, in which he superimposes a cantilena of clarinets with new layers of music. Wolfgang Rihm, for his part, was inspired by Greek myth to create a virtuoso trumpet concerto. The myth tells of the satyr Marsyas: he challenges Apollo, the god of the Muses, to a musical competition, is defeated, and is then skinned alive as punishment for his hubris. And in glut (2016), the Swiss composer Dieter Ammann makes musical abundance (a “glut”) come to a glow (German Glut). What all three composers have in common is their feeling for brilliant timbres and discernible structures, as well as their thoughtful connection to musical tradition. And we are eager to see which paths the Estonian Marianna Liik and the Spaniard Josef Planells Schiaffino will take in their respective new orchestral works.

In 2003, the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger founded the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY: an educational institution for music of the 20th and 21st centuries that is internationally unique. Each summer, highly talented young musicians from all around the world come together here for the opportunity to study in depth and then to perform contemporary scores and classics of modern music. Almost 1,200 graduates have taken part in the Academy over the past fifteen years, many of whom have attended for several summers. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm has been in charge of artistic leadership since 2016, with Matthias Pintscher serving as Principal Conductor. They are supported by internationally acclaimed performers of contemporary music who work as instrumental coaches. The orchestral and ensemble concerts for 2018 focus on the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, including performances of such pieces as Inori and Gruppen; for the latter, the Academy Orchestra joins forces with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pintscher, Sir Simon Rattle, and Duncan Ward. They will give the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s new score Reading Malevich and will also present works by Kurtág, Bella, Zimmermann, Nono, and composer-in-residence Fritz Hauser. The Composer Seminar is being led for the third time this year, in which young composers discuss their works with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann, and other guests and rehearse them with selected LUCERNE FESTIVAL ALUMNI. A Conducting Fellowship offers scholarship holders the opportunity to follow along in the Academy’s work. The Orchestra of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY is once again participating this summer in the “Special Event Day” and appears in the “40min” series as well.

Ruth Reinhardt, a native of Saarbrücken, studied violin with Rudolf Koelman and orchestral conducting with Constantin Trinks and Johannes Schlaefli at Zurich University of the Arts before transferring to study with Alan Gilbert at the Juilliard School in New York, where she received her master’s degree in conducting. She acquired important experience at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she collaborated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2015; as a Conducting Fellow with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (2015-16); and as an Associate Fellow in Marin Alsop’s Taki Concordia Program (2015-17). She began her career from 2016 to 2018 as assistant conductor with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweeden. She has also conducted a wide array of concerts there, including the ReMix series featuring contemporary music. During the 2017-18 season, Reinhardt was additionally a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and she was selected as one of only three active participants for the annual Master Class of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. She has worked as an assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas with Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra in New York and is serving as assistant conductor of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY this summer. Reinhardt has appeared as a guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Indianapolis and Malmö Symphony Orchestras, and the Musikkollegium Winterthur. Among the opera productions that she has conducted are Dvořák’s Rusalka and Weber’s Der Freischütz for the North Czech Opera Company and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus at Leipzig University of the Arts. Ruth Reinhardt has also distinguished herself as a composer. By age 17, she had already written an opera that she performed with children and young people from her hometown.

The American conductor, composer, and violinist David Fulmer, who was born in 1981, studied composition with Milton Babbitt and violin with Robert Mann at the Juilliard School in New York. In 2016 he won the Koussevitzky Award and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 2017 he has served as Music Director of the Hunter Symphony. He has collaborated as a guest conductor with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Elision Ensemble, the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, and the Sydney Modern Music Ensemble. He has appeared at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Festival Chamber Music Northwest, and the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center; was invited in 2014 to participate in the Green Umbrella concerts at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Walt Disney Concert Hall; and conducted the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ALUMNI in 2016 as part of the New York Philharmonic’s NY Biennial. David Fulmer is also a successful composer: following the world premiere of his Violin Concerto in 2010 at New York’s Lincoln Center, he was invited to present the work in Tanglewood as well as in Europe and Australia, and he has recorded it with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Matthias Pintscher. He has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Scharoun Ensemble in Berlin, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, as well as from such institutions as Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, and the Salzburg Foundation. Fulmer has garnered numerous distinctions and is the first American ever to have been awarded the grand prize at the International Edvard Grieg Composer Competition.

Sir George Benjamin, who was born 1960 in London, started composing at the age of seven. In 1974 he began regular music studies in his native city, moving to Paris two years later to study with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod; from 1978 to 1982, he completed his education with Alexander Goehr at King’s College, Cambridge. The orchestral works Ringed by the Flat Horizon, which was premiered by the BBC Proms in 1980, and At First Light (1982) marked Benjamin’s breakthrough to international acclaim. In 2002, Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of Palimpsests, which opened a portrait series dedicated to him at London’s Barbican Centre. Benjamin unveiled his first music theater work, Into the Little Hill, at the Paris Festival d’Automne in 2006. This was followed by Written on Skin in 2012 at the Festival Aix-en-Provence, which also sets a libretto by Martin Crimp and which has since been performed by 20 other companies; he continued his collaboration with Lessons in Love and Violence at the Royal Opera House in London in 2018. The last decade has seen multi-concert retrospectives of the works of Benjamin, who was composer-in-residence at LUCERNE FESTIVAL in 2008, in San Francisco, Aldeburgh, Ojai, Frankfurt a. M., Aix-en-Provence, Milan, Turin, London, Toronto, New York, Dortmund, and Amsterdam. He is a resident artist with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie in the 2018-19 season. Sir George Benjamin is additionally a successful conductor and has led the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, and the Ensemble Modern. He is Professor of Composition at King’s College London. A Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Benjamin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017.

George Benjamin was introduced for the first time as a conductor at LUCERNE FESTIVAL in 2008 in a concert with the Ensemble intercontemporain and in performances of his opera Into the Little Hill.

Reinhold Friedrich began his career as principal trumpeter with the RSO Frankfurt. After winning the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1986, he began performing around the world and has concertized with the Berlin Baroque Soloists, La Stagione Frankfurt, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the DSO Berlin. He enjoyed a close partnership with Claudio Abbado, who named him principal trumpet of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA in 2003. Friedrich, who has also mastered playing the period instrument keyed trumpet, is equally dedicated to early and contemporary music and has given the world premieres of works by Wolfgang Rihm, Hans Werner Henze, Rebecca Saunders, and Adriana Hölszky. His recordings have twice been awarded the ECHO Klassik. He has served as Professor of Trumpet at the Karlsruhe Academy of Music since 1989.

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